I have increasingly become aware of how many parents agonize over the problems their children experience. They are called upon, even in old age, when their children are supposed to be responsible adults living on their own, to help them out of problems of their own making. They want to help but their loving advice and financial support does not appear to solve the presenting issues. They realize that their children’s problems are deeper than their ability to help. Most often the problem is spiritual – they are out of the will of God. No amount of concern, care and love of a parent can alter their condition if they are out of the will of God and do not put Christ and his kingdom first in their lives. How do we know if they have a spiritual problem? It depends on their self-perception. They may be resistant to their condition. They may suffer from denial. Let me give you two analogies.
You are in the examination room at your doctor’s office. Up until now you have enjoyed good health. Yet your annual physical has identified some problems. You have been referred to a specialist for further tests. You don’t feel bad. You don’t anticipate that the problem will be of any consequence. You are annoyed at the inconvenience of these tests. You have been used to taking care of yourself, and now someone else is presuming to interpret your condition. Only the other day you were out enjoying a round of golf with not a care in the world. Now you are at the mercy of people you don’t know. The doctor arrives with the results. He is serious. Your condition is worse than you thought. It may be life-threatening. You may need surgery and extensive treatment. You cannot believe it. You are in shock. You become depressed at the news. Perhaps if you got a second opinion more to your liking you would feel more optimistic. It is hard to accept that you can’t fix this by yourself. Your default drive is to deny that you have a problem. Christian Wiman in his memoir, My Bright Abyss, described his experience.
“We traveled to Boston to see a specialist, at the time the only person in North America who was doing research on my particular disease, and he terrified us by speculating – irresponsibly, it now seems to me – that my symptoms suggested that the cancer might already have caused amyloidosis in my heart; a death sentence.” (p.69)
Gene Frenette, (Florida Times-Union, May 13, 2013) writes that last June, Justin Blackmon, member of the Jacksonville Jaguar football team, told us he didn’t have an alcohol problem despite an aggravated DUI conviction revealing blood-alcohol levels of .24 and .26, triple the legal limit. Now in his first comments since the NFL officially suspended him four games on April 30 for violating its substance abuse policy, he rejected the notion of any non-alcohol addiction issues. “If you want to ask if I have a problem, I have a problem with making a poor decision,” said Blackmon. Those last two words — poor decision — provide Blackmon a safe response without getting into details about what led to his suspension. We don’t know if he tested positive for a recreational drug like marijuana, perhaps a more harmful substance, or if the penalty was triggered by the Jaguars’ receiver simply failing to report for a league-mandated test. That’s all confidential. Running back Maurice Jones-Drew threw up a caution flag, saying the media’s attention on Blackmon gets blown out of proportion, adding: “If you’re that age and you have that amount of money, how would you act? You answer that question truthfully, and you can go from there. Some people don’t live in reality.” Look, here’s the reality: Blackmon chose to pursue an NFL career, it wasn’t forced on him. When a first-round draft pick is given about $11 million in guaranteed money (which can now be forfeited), that means accepting the consequences of violating league rules that are well spelled out. Blackmon’s default drive is to deny that he has a problem.
The default drive of all of us is to deny that we have a deep-seated spiritual problem that affects our attitude, our behavior, and our destiny. St. Paul uses two words to describe it: transgressions (trespasses) and sins. The first is the term for something we have done to go against God’s commandments, and the other is the term for falling short of God’s will for our lives. In other words they are the words for sins of commission and omissions: the things that we have done that we ought not to have done, and the things we have not done that we ought to have done. The result of this deep-seated human problem is death: spiritual and moral death, separation from God, being without spirit. This is Paul’s diagnosis of the human condition.
“It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.” (Eph.2:1-3, The Message)
This spiritual diagnosis of the human race is offensive to many. Our self-perception is that we are better than most people. We do not want to think of ourselves as being spiritually sick, of having a sin addiction problem. We prefer to think that the problem other people have is making poor choices, which can be solved by having better role models, better home life and families, better economic advantages, and better education. But you can have all these and still make terrible choices. The problem lies much deeper. It is a profound inclination of our heart that distorts our desires and wills. It is a power that corrupts us and puts us all in rebellion against God. Like cancer cells that live in our bodies and slowly grow over a lifetime until they reach the point of being life-threatening, sin lives within us and affects every part of human nature. This spiritual sickness makes it impossible for us to consistently desire and to actually live in accord with God’s will for us. If we are honest with ourselves, we find that we often do not desire and are not inclined to do our best. Instead of loving God first and foremost and our neighbor as much as we love ourselves, we tend to worship ourselves, we unconsciously put ourselves first, we instinctively make ourselves the center of our lives. We ignore God. We want to be in control. That is why we get angry and depressed when we find ourselves battling a medical condition over which we have no power.
Paul identifies three sources of this spiritual problem that plagues our lives. First, is the ‘ways of this world.’ J.B. Phillips translates this: ”all the time that you drifted along on the stream of this world’s ideas of living.” In other words, the culture, the spirit of the age, the moral trends reported by the media and the lifestyles of our community.
Second, is the spiritual forces of darkness and disobedience. Those who think they are living a free life, independent of any god who coerces them to obey him need to realize that they “obeyed the world’s unseen ruler who is still operating in those who do not respond to the truth of God.” We are spiritually deceived if we think that we are free agents. We are either following the light of Christ or following the forces of darkness.
Third, is the gratification of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. The Message puts it, “We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it.” We are prisoners of our passions, which do not like being told what to do, and believe that what we do is our own business and no one else’s.
As a result of our spiritual sickness, our sin disease, “we were by nature objects of wrath.” We are condemned by the holiness and judgment of God. Our disease is terminal. The wages of sin is death. As John Stott comments:
This biblical statement about the ‘deadness’ of non-Christian people raises problems for many because it does not seem to square with the facts of everyday experience. Lots of people who make no Christian profession whatever, who even openly repudiate Jesus Christ, appear to be very much alive. One has the vigorous body of an athlete, another the lively mind of a scholar, a third the vivacious personality of a film star. Are we to say that such people, if Christ has not saved them, are dead? Yes, indeed, we must and do say this very thing. For in the sphere which matters supremely (which is neither the body, nor the mind, nor the personality, but the soul) they have no life. And you can tell it. They are blind to the glory of Jesus Christ, and deaf to the voice of the Holy Spirit. They have no love for God, no sensitive awareness of his personal reality, no leaping of their spirit toward him in the cry, ‘Abba, Father’, no longing for fellowship with his people. They are as unresponsive to him as a corpse. So we should not hesitate to affirm that a life without God (however physically fit and mentally alert the person may be) is a living death, and that those who live it are dead even while they are living (1 Tim.5:6). To affirm this paradox is to become aware of the basic tragedy of fallen human existence. It is that people who were created by God and for God should now be living without God. Indeed, that was our condition until the Good Shepherd found us.
What is the solution to this problem? How can a loving parent help her child? The parent can pray that they find Christ as their Lord and Savior. Nothing else will change their condition. The Gospel is available to them for God has acted in Jesus to save them. St. Paul writes: “But,” by the love and mercy of God in Christ, we are rescued, resurrected, made alive, pardoned. God provides the remedy to our condition. It is called salvation. We are saved by grace – God’s undeserved gift – that “made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.” The treatment is successful. “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus.” We are given a new lease on life. Thanks be to God.
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